Re: tail --recursive

[Jim Meyering]

Simon Windows <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
>>>> I haven't looked at it at all yet,
>>>> but wonder if you've considered using inotify?
>>>> That seems like that mechanism would be much more appropriate,
>>>> when tailing many files in an arbitrary hierarchy.
>
> I have looked at the inotify library as you suggested. I agree it would
> be a useful tool to use in tail as it removes the need to poll files and
> would make a recursive version much more efficient. I can also see there
> has been some discussion of using inotify in coreutils for this purpose.
>
> I think that issue is orthogonal to the recursive option I am proposing.
>
> I'd like the current version of tail to handle directories and follow
> them in a sensible fashion. None of the inotify programs solve this
> problem unless you use them initiate a new tail process for each new file.
>
> If you're willing to consider a recursive option I will be more than
> happy to develop it further to make it robust and help with testing.

As I said already, here,

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2008-11/msg00068.html

look at iwatch.

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